When looking at Battlefield 6 discourse in recent weeks, there’s one word I keep seeing pop up: “fumbled.” The highs of the first few weeks after launch are gone, and while Battlefield 6 isn’t in some kind of disastrous, imminent shutdown situation, it’s really struggled to capitalize on the early hype. Season 2 has only added to its problem, with a poor reaction from players and a roadmap of content that has sparked debates about EA and Battlefield Studios’ commitment to the game. A lack of new battlegrounds has been one of Season 2’s biggest criticisms, but BF6’s producer Alexia Christofi says that Battlefield Studios is trying to “bring things to players as we can and as quickly as we can build them,” and that it “empathizes” with players asking for more.
Despite Battlefield 6’s gargantuan launch, which saw it properly take the fight to Call of Duty Black Ops 6, sentiment has soured and player counts have tumbled since the start of Season 1 back in November last year. I was quietly hopeful that Season 2, which dropped earlier this week, would be the beginning of a more positive period for the FPS game, but sadly it seems the opposite has happened. While there’s a welcome injection of new weapons and vehicles to the combat sandbox, a flurry of limited-time modes and just two new maps have underwhelmed fans, and on Steam at least, Season 2’s had only a modest effect on player count.
In an interview with GameSpot, which was posted the day Season 2 went live, Christofi appears keen to bring more than two maps per season to the game. “In terms of cadence, we would love to create way more maps,” they say. “But we’re just trying to kind of bring things to players as we can and as quickly as we can build them.”
To me, this seems somewhat at odds with comments given by producer Phil Girette, who tells TechRadar in a separate interview that Season 2 is the “foundation” of all future seasons and “the level we need to hit.”
Christofi also says in a later interview with GamesBeat: “We’re releasing on a cadence where we feel the maps are up to quality and we’re happy with how they play, the variety they give to the players. I completely empathize with players when they want more maps and more content. They talk about that because they’re passionate about the game, passionate about the franchise. But we’re a team of a certain size. We don’t want to sacrifice quality.”
In the wake of Season 2, there have been a lot of comparisons drawn between the amount of maps on offer in a Battlefield 6 season, versus what expansion packs in games like Battlefield 4 offered – an unfair comparison, if you ask me. But still, I wholeheartedly agree with fans that two maps per season doesn’t feel like enough, especially given how commercially successful Battlefield 6 was at launch.
Four separate teams were combined to create Battlefield Studios, and while they of course had different tasks in creating the base game, that’s a lot of developers that are presumably still assigned to Battlefield 6. That seemingly large resource, the fact that the game launched so strongly, and Battlefield Studios’ reliance on limited-time experiences, is leading to understandable frustration at the way seasons are being approached.
If EA is content with how Battlefield 6 is doing right now, or there really are limitations on how fast the team at Battlefield Studios can produce new maps, then I doubt anything will change. But if it wants to really solidify the game for the long term and see player counts shoot up nearer to launch levels, bigger and more impactful seasons are going to be the only way to do that.